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Suncorp Creates a Culture of Innovation Built on NetApp

NetApp Storage Is Critical to Suncorp’s Ability to Transform Its Business and Win in Today’s Environment

Sunnyvale, Calif.-March 28,
2011- In today's hypercompetitive business environment,
information technology (IT) can provide organizations with a true
competitive advantage. As a result, the decisions an organization
makes about its storage environment can mean the difference between
winning and losing. The Suncorp Group, a provider of diversified
financial services and one of Australia's largest companies at over
$15 billion in annual revenue, recently looked to its storage
environment to serve as the catalyst to help it foster a culture of
innovation, scale at the speed of thought, and create a future with
infinite possibilities. And Suncorp did it all built
on NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP).

After a string of more than 50 business
acquisitions and a major merger, Suncorp became a 16,000-employee
company with five different divisions, countless unique brands, and
an IT infrastructure that was complex and provided a barrier to
growth. Realizing the only way to move forward was to dramatically
improve the way it did business and unlock the untapped human
capital that lay within, Suncorp made a strategic bet on storage to
ignite its transformation.

"We looked to NetApp not only as a technology
partner to help us achieve greater business flexibility and
efficiency, but to help us materially change the way we do work,"
said Jeff Smith, CEO of Suncorp Business Services. "We have a
strong belief that the companies we partner with are companies that
we aspire to be like. From the start NetApp has been built on
innovation and has always believed in pushing the boundaries of
what's possible with a single goal in mind: customer success. That
is where we wanted to be."

Working side by side with NetApp, Suncorp
transformed its business by migrating 80% of its entire IT
environment onto a shared infrastructure, creating a large
virtualized private cloud. Coupled with new agile methodologies and
processes, this shared infrastructure provided the foundation that
has delivered significant effects on the efficiency, flexibility,
velocity, and success of Suncorp's business while eliciting an
entire culture of innovation that is changing the pace of
business.

News Facts

Foster a culture of innovation

Collaborating with NetApp enabled Suncorp to remove the
technology barriers that were previously in place, allowing it to
tap the minds of its innovative workforce for new and fresh ideas.
A prime example is Suncorp's mobile banking platform, which was
developed by a young graduate and launched in just a few short
weeks at a significantly reduced cost. The new application drove
$250 million in revenue in the first few months it was live.

Through increased IT efficiency, Suncorp's business has been
able to deliver more impact in less time. For example, Suncorp
completely revamped its online banking platform in a fraction of
the time and for significantly less than the industry average of
$150 to $300 million. During this time it has grown 20% per
year.

Thanks to product innovation in the Internet and mobile
channels developed on its shared infrastructure, Suncorp has been
able to increase the level of insurance business done online from
10% to 40%.

Scale at the speed of thought

Suncorp consolidated from seven data centers into two, reduced
the number of servers from 4,000 down to 300, and moved from a
storage environment that contained thousands of disparate storage
systems down to a single virtualized, shared infrastructure,
enabling Suncorp to more easily and quickly scale its business.

As part of this shared infrastructure, NetApp worked closely
with Cisco and VMware to provide Suncorp with a highly flexible
Secure Multi-tenancy infrastructure that allows the different
business units within Suncorp to share the same IT infrastructure
while the information remains isolated and secure.

With this IT
transformation, Suncorp is now more dynamic and efficient,
enabling it to rapidly take advantage of new business opportunities
and respond faster and more consistently to market demands.

Create a future with infinite possibilities

Thanks to its smaller data center footprint, Suncorp has
realized significant savings on space, power consumption, and
cooling costs.

Combined with IT efficiencies in other areas that free up time
and resources to focus on what the business needs next, overall IT
costs have been reduced by 30%, providing Suncorp with the added
flexibility to fund development projects and deliver three times as
many business capabilities as before.

The added efficiency and flexibility have also enabled Suncorp
to gain a single, centralized view of its 9 million customers;
16,000 employees; all financials; and, ultimately, insurance
pricing and claims, leading to improved margins and an enhanced
customer experience.

Supporting Quotes

Jeff Smith, CEO of Suncorp Business
Services
"When we took a critical look at our business and what we needed to
do in order to be successful and grow, we realized that IT was the
launching point to make that happen. The speed and agility that
NetApp enables have been critical to our success, allowing us to
drive innovation and completely reset expectations of what is
possible. What once was an innovation team of nine people suddenly
became an innovation team of 16,000. Building a culture of
innovation and developing the confidence that every problem is
solvable have become our real competitive advantages."

Manish Goel, executive vice president of Product
Operations, NetApp "Suncorp's story is the perfect
example of what drives us here at NetApp, and that is the
opportunity to collaborate with each and every customer with one
goal in mind: to help them succeed. By building on NetApp, Suncorp
was able to move to a shared infrastructure that transformed the
way it did business and created a wave of innovation within the
company. Suncorp is proof that the storage environment an
organization builds on is foundational to its ability to break the
mold and forge ahead."

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